college, right after college in 1992 i started interviewing world war ii veterans and i've done about 3,000 interviews with world war ii veterans as well as veterans from world war i, all the way through korea, afghanistan and iraq, and you mentioned i was actually embedded in a marine platoon in iraq with come in the battle of fallujah. but it was always about the veterans' stories in the brenner assignment is one of the most amazing stories i ever came across. i was working on my third book called spy saboteurs which is a history of the oss and when i was doing that i but go to the national archives to find research on the buck, and the national archives is about 3 cubic miles of records.

inside the archives it is like drilling for oil. you don't know if you are going to find if you are going to find oil or you are going to find a dry hole and i was going through box after box after box of one day at dawn something called the tacoma shan and it was this this dealed file that had arrested stables on it and i turned to the tacoma mission and it was a page 69 think and i flipped through it. talk about how an oss agent was suddenly surrounded by german soldiers and he was being taken back to the pw cage and in the process of being taken back he did not want to go willingly so out of his pocket he pulled a stinner pen which was actually polipoint pen that was 22 caliber pistol and he aimed it at the guard and a guard was stunned, did not believe them at all and actually raised his rifle and at that very same

moment that oss operatives ran like a race horse and went towards a barn. the back of his calf was grazed by this german nco's bullet. i wanted to know more about that individual. his name was howard chaplain. he became sort of an obsession in a sense to try to find to he was in a sense and then also to get a story. for the next six years i would try to interview howard chapel but i would always get the same line, well, you know if you really need to come out here and i really can't talk to you about it and it was like so many of the oss veterans, they maintained their vows of silence and it was even worse than that. he had never talked about the war even to his family. so, this mission became of real

interest to me but it was only the sort of the tip of the iceberg in a sense because this book is about to missions that are combined together, two stories that a combined together, which creates an entire almost turrell if. for me this was the most complex book i have ever written. i i didn't even know if i could write it. it took seven years of research. literally 10,000 documents. i have about 11 of these things at home. these are declassified documents that came from various archives around the world, the national archives, the german archives, the italian archive syndicates literally devoured this stuff for a year and read it. and let it sit and try to absorb its end came around the story, and that the key was actually

trying to find chapel and getting an interview. and, the key to that story was a gentleman who was a spy handler of these two missions, how are chapel's mission and an individual who i am going to talk about in the second, stephen hall in that person as albert immoderacy. his nickname during the war was the brain because he was a spy. he was effectively the case officer that handled these two missions, and his entire basement was filled up to about, it is still there, of thousands, tens of thousands of these documents and he became, he was an amazing man that he got chapel to talk to me. it was three or four years ago i asked albert, i said to him i am thinking about going back to

iraq. he said no, you need to talk to howard and he got howard to talk to me. that is an entire story in itself getting howard to talk. digressing to the second mission now, what this whole brenner assignment is about here is that in world war ii, there is an area called the brenner pass. it still exists to this day and is the main thoroughfare where there highways and railroads, where germany in world war ii main supplies came to this pass. and throughout the war, the allies constantly tried to bomb it into destruction, but they were unsuccessful. so, the story begins actually in 1938. you have a man that is an andover graduate the drops out of harvard and yale and decides to join the u.s. army as a private, but in 1938 he skied,

he was a wealthy individual and he skied near the brenner pass and decided when the war broke out that the supply could potentially be cut, so fast-forward a little bit as he was a private, he then becomes an officer. he continues to formulate this plan that if you drop me behind the lines, by parchute with a pack of explosives i can destroy this of passes that lead into the brenner. and, in 1944 after the allies invaded italy, and hall is on a train from training as an engineer back from the east coast to oregon, he pence the letter that says to the oss, if you drop me behind the lines, i can accomplish all of these things.

and, it is kind of remarkable that that train line exist to this day. it is called the empire builder and it runs from chicago of the way to seattle or organ. on that long train ride, hall brody letter that changed his entire fate and destiny. the oss, just to back up for a second is effectively the first cia or central intelligence agency but it was far more than that during world war ii. it was also for special operations troops. they dealt with propaganda. they also dealt with research and analysis which took all of the human intelligence that was out there and collated it and then analyzed it. it was sort of an entire agency with everything under one umbrella, which in many ways brenner assignment as well as what is going on today are still, it is a very back to the future problem.

we are dealing with human intelligence issues and everything else and a lot of people of abdicated the need for an oss again, but hall joins this agency and goes through spy training and is given the opportunity to form his own team, and the forms a small team of about four men and they jump back behind the lines into northern italy to sever the past or the small passes that lead up to the past, but everything begins to go wrong even from the start. hollis given his own mission called operation mercury. he is going into try to sever these passes and then there's another submission attached to them. he is not given the radio operator in the sets off on his own and really one of the great epic adventure stories of world war ii. he is climbing mountains. he is cross-country skiing. during this whole time he is avoiding the oss who is

constantly hunting him and the other people in the area but he begins to grow sort of a partisan movement and the blows things up. it is incredible. the reason why i was able to capture so much detail is that stephen hall did sort of the historians dream of. he illegally kept a diary on cigarette paper and recorded daily entries of what he did. everything from eating polenta with the natives to showing people how to ride a motorcycle to blowing up bridges and avoiding the ss. this is an entire story that is wrapped up behind the lines but what happens as he is separated from the group and they don't give him a radio operator to communicate. anti-has to communicate through handwritten transcripts that he sends back through another radio operator in the hope is always

to bring in somebody else. another radio operator and the other team and that is where the second story of this book comes into play with our chapel. the man i was talking about what the, mission. chapel was sent to basically help haul achieve the objectives of severing the lines of communication to the brenner pass. and i'm going to briefly talk about chapel's dori now and it is really incredible because we talk about for special operation teams. this was it. this was the german operational group in the operational groups within the oss were effectively the first green berets. the entire washington area is littered with training grounds for the oss operatives and for the operational groups, which

effectively the for special operations groups, the congressional country club served that purpose. the entire fair ways of the club was turned into a training area where men learned hand-to-hand combat because they learned how to blow things up and in silent kill people and all kinds of stuff. chapel was given the responsibility of something called the german operational group. this is an amazing story. it is about incredible desperados from all walks. if there ever was a dirty dozen, this is syd. these were guys that were coming that had escaped concentration camps. one guy was a lufafa pilate and many of them were jewish refugees that have escaped nazi germany, that were here in the german operational group. they became a naturalized american citizens to go back behind the lines. the current book that i just

broke, they dared return, is about that story. aid is about five men that basically are refugees from nazi germany that escaper nazi germany and then dared to go back behind lines. i am just going to digress a little bit about that group. they had three other missions that changed the course of world war ii. but what happened is the german operational group goes back into italy and they linked up with modern roxy and it is absolutely wild. the group gets lost in the shuffle. they go to ruppel depo. many of them in including the jewish five are going to be cannibalized into a replacement unit to be paratroopers for the 82nd airborne division.

chapel somehow finds a mission and he finds a mission to go back and find stephen hall. what happens is, this separate mission is prepared to give stephen hall a radio operator. going back to stephen hall now, with the operation mercury, everything is going wrong. he becomes depressed. his feet are actually frostbitten. he has to pack them in grease because it is so cold in the pre-alps in the dolomites. and he is scaling mountains and avoiding german patrols. what is fascinating is this book is built around five major characters. hall, chapel in the next person i'm going to talk about right now. hall is given a book in the

middle of the night after one of his ambushes in the doesn't understand who is from. it is the scarlett-- book about the french revolution in how an englishmen saves french nobility and he is given the book. he wonders who is from. their resistance group he is with says it is from a friend. hall read the book and about a week later he is asked to return it. and he goes in the dead of night across the alps with this partisan leader into the small village, which is the mayor is perhaps the most interesting woman in the brenner assignment. she is actually i.t. ee genned. she is french. she is from the french

intelligence service that is planted there because they want to monitor the movements of the brenner pass. they want to avoid what happened in 1931 italy attacked france but she is also this nazi mayor and effectively a ee davinci has the governor of the area under her thumb. hall goes in the dead of the night to return the book and there is a code that she puts her. there is no germans and her small villa. she puts it pine branch at the window. hall comes in that night and returned the book, and she is actually seductively laying on this couch, waiting for him. this is not something i made up. this is all in his diary and i actually interviewed the countesses housekeeper who still live. terry all she explained what

happened. it is just absolutely incredible. this is a woman that could easily be angelina jolie in today's period. she was able to handle a machine gun, but she was able to seduce the nazi governor of the area too and she tried to seduce hall. what is fascinating is that half of her house, the upstairs of her house-- this house by the way still exists to this day. i have been to north and italy. i found a house and i walked in it. inside the top of the house was a room that was filled with sugar and spice. she had a sweet tooth then the other half of the room was filled with ammunition and machine gun rounds and explosives, and that was the kind of woman that she was. she tried, she talks to stephen

hall and they developed a relationship behind allianz, but this whole time hall wanted to accomplish his mission and nothing seemed to be going right. at the same time, the of the major character in this book comes into play who is a nazi ss officer, part of the gestapo august shiffer who relentlessly hunts every allied agent in the area including hall as well as these-- he has rounded up scores of them. as this is all going on all's entire network is being in culturated and he is losing people left and right and he is just a hairsbreadth away from being captured. what happens is a massive snowstorm hits the area and hall decides the time has come to change the course of this mission. he is not going to sit back. he is going to try to make a change. anti-realizes that he can't get

to the brenner pass but there's a small railroad substation that is about 50 miles away that is in this heavily occupied german area called cortines. if he is able to get there and destroy it, the substation had taken denser that was made of mercury. it was very high tech for the time. the light rail system was electric. if it was destroyed it would be out of commission for three months. the whole part of the supply line in that area would be disabled so hall decides to roll the dice against the countess's wishes and sets out in the middle of a snowstorm with aipac, a 30-pound pack of explosives to destroy the substation. and what happens is it takes in nearly a day to get there through cross-country skiing and everything else and he develops hyperthermia and snow blindness and eventually falls into the hands of the germans in august

shiffer. as this is all going on, howard chapel parachutes behind the lines into come into northern italy to find hall and there's this race to find hauled before this final mission takes place. what happens is schiffler actually beats and to the punch. hall-- chapel lists of rounded, his entire hideout is surrounded by hundreds if not a thousand ss troops and he shoots his way out. it is one of the most amazing combat scenes i have never had a chance to examine. the house is on the side of the mountain. i found the house. i have actually been there with the former members of the resistance and i looked at the house and the exact details and they actually shot their way out

of the house and made their way down towards the mountain stream and a tramp through this mountain stream. hundreds of ss troops or round them and as they were shooting their way out, there was a fork in the stream. they had to decide to go right or left. remarkably, it was a decision of life or death. the men that turned left were saved and the men that turned right were captured. but, as this drama was unfolding, the ss was all around and there were a tiny crevices in the side of this stream where the men actually buried themselves and cover themselves with mud as the germans passed by. and, it comes to this point that howard chuckful is actually capture and he is caught by this german soldier in the polls out

this star. amazingly, he escapes. he escapes certain debt, certain capture and then what happens is he hides for an entire day in the countryside along with the rest of this team. many of his men are rolled up and he finds himself inside of the barn, a cow barn near the drop zone where the missionary was. and come he wakes up that morning to the sound of german war dogs, an entire german platoon has surrounded the barn and he worked his way out of the barnett only to feel the jagged edge of a mauser bayonet in his back and at that point, he says, rod, or surrender and he is being walked back to the german p.o.w. cage and for the second time he escapes and what is

remarkable it is, and this is detailed in the mishra report, this german guard walks i am bac, this man who is about 6 feet 2 inches and is he is walking him back, chapel finds in the area that is sort of a dead area where there are other witnesses to what is going on, and he lets the german soldier with his bayonet in his back kind of bump into him and as that happens, he takes the back of this german's nick and does it back flip and then cracks this man's neck and throws the body into a drainage cofer. one of the amazing part of this entire story, which is entirely true is that he finds himself in a situation where he is in an openld and the house to decide, how do i across this open field without attracting the attention of the scores of

ss soldiers that are surrounding the field? and he realizes that, if the quickly moves, the i will catch that motion, so he does something that is absolutely audacious and typical of chapel. he takes his fields to nick which is sort of british candy just pull that down and he slips his hair back, and the crazily walks across the field like he owns it. nobody in the ss notices. he walks into a small house that contains women that are actually niching that day. and, surprisingly these women are like, the way he described it is, it was like an american officer dropped in for breakfast every morning. they just looked at him and didn't say anything and he walked right out the backdoor. what happened next is really quite remarkable.

it becomes a situation where stephen hall is captured by august shifter and august shiffer and howard chapel are effectively do with one another behind alliance. it becomes this giant cat and mouse chase as to who will fight to first and chapel is being hunted left and right by shiffer's men. and tragically during this time period, stephen hall is tortured. waterboarded, he is bald up and tortured. doesn't reveal much. it is largely ineffective but tortured and then killed by alvis shiffer. what happens is, that crime creates this thing called war games crisis-- crisis number 36

were we have in august shiffer's own words exactly what he did on a daily basis of this book is in their own words not only in the american words but also the words of the germans as well as italian partisans who were there and this manhunt continues ann chapel does some of the most extraordinary things. he tries to, he tries to basically, he takes out a bridge single handedly, where he storms across it, heavily defended bridge with a tommy gun and captures most of the-- who try to detonated but the bomb that he plans only destroys part of the bridge. and he starts to work with contacts within the resistance to find shiffer, and at the same time as all of this is going on, shiffer is trying to hunts

chapel and the war is starting to draw to a close. shiffer and the other men that were part of the ess began to use the brenner pass not is a means of bringing supplies down but it becomes a means of escape. chapel, what is most remarkable, works with the countess, who is actively trying to find her lover, stephen hall. the countess provides transportation because the germans have the entire area around the brenner pass heavily defended. she provides a track that is driven by a partisan that works with her and that men hide in secret compartments in the truck and they drive up towards the brenner pass. when i first heard this story, so much of the story i did not believe it until i went back to

italy, and i interviewed the partisan that drove the truck. and, i mean everything in this book, so much of it is serendipity. i would go from one italian town to another to find these old men, these old partisans that had fought in the war, and i will never forget. i went to the town for the countess living die was trying to find these old partisans that it fought with chaplains hall and we found this 40-year-old man that had a cable track and we said there is no way this guy has anything to do with the war but he was the only person there and the person who was with me, roberto test delaney his great uncle was killed with chapel, interviewed this man and they said my father fought with the partisans but you might want to talk to the guy's house that is

at the edge of the town. i will never forget going into the town, going from one house to the next, and i found this house that they were talking about and i saw this old man sitting next to the tv. i will never forget. i knocked on the door and he just came up to the door and he looked pretty angry. he said to me, what do you want? and i said, i said one word. i said chapel. and he said to me, he goes, rambo. [laughter] and that became the segue into our discussion with the truck driver that drove them up. then what happened is really quite remarkable. chapel accomplished hall's mission had worked with the partisans that were there behind

allianz that hall had initially formed and they said the ambush positions in this gorge that is considered impossible. hundreds of these partisans had machine guns and they blew up the bridge that led up towards the gorge which was part of the brenner system if you will, and members of august shiffer's group along with major schroeder who have hunted chapel in the 504 panzer which was an elite tiger unit and all try to break through the pass to escape towards germany. and, chapel's nee-- meena nemesis decided after they had tried to assault the past and they couldn't get through it, that they would resort to more nefarious means. every single civilian within the

town was rounded up and placed in the church and the gestapo said to chapel, we will blow the church a few don't let this pass. what is remarkable is, to this day and italy there is a white surrender flags that exists that is inside the church where the germans came out and tried to negotiate with chapel. chappell said to them point-blank, go ahead and blow up the church. we will and isley ewald and then he also added an entire bluff, that there was a parachute battalion that had dropped behind the hills and that they were ready to annihilate these german forces. ..

like i treated your men and trouble looked at him and said of course. [laughter] what happened next is the nature of the 504 tygart -- tiger

battalion wasn't going to let fruiter push him around here didn't want to surrender. he agreed to surrender his entire force of 5,000 men that day to howard chuckle a single agent. what schroeder then reluctantly agreed to surrender as well and what happens is one of the more amazing stories of world war ii. thousands of ss troops as well as members of an elite german tiger battalion center a single individual and it changes -- it has an amazing impact on his life as well as the lives of the other people there. in many ways this is exactly what happens in the book i have now called they their return

where these men that were the part of the jewish life go back behind the lines, they blow up 26 trains and they are captured but turn the tables on their captors and fred mayer goetz an entire half of and are eager to surrender along with all of austria. it's quite an amazing story. it is what is amazing about the us s is it is a lot of single individuals that are able to take what you expect to happen and sort of been history and change it and this is what men like chapel and hall and fred mayer did literally changed the course of the war and it is why i have been so interested in world war ii, the story's over

the veterans and stories in the assignment. it's about people that have changed the course of things and about amazing americans that have changed the course of a destiny and i will ended at that and now will take questions. [applause] >> we usually take six to eight questions. do i have a question? please. >> i've already read the book and this is a great book and i recommend it to everybody. when we are talking about when the chapel was -- when they captured the tiger battalion it was a short cryptic chapter where you just kind of save the five ss officers who were shot trying to peacekeeping and to

leave it at that. can you elaborate a little bit more on that? >> well, what i can say this with the documents tell, and the men, schroeder and his other officers surrendered and the documents say they were trying to east cape and i guess we will leave it at that. [laughter] >> a question of how you do your research. the spiegel languages or use translators, interpreters, how do you go about getting the documents? >> excellent question. i want to say one more thing about major schroeder who was shot trying to east cape. this is one of the greatest war

criminals and italy's history as well. he had hung over 400 men on the beat hooks. he had personally interrogated and also executed people so this is an extremely brutal individual and i'm just going to leave that up that. going back to your question i was really fortunate. i had dr. paulo, who had spent a lifetime studying stephen hall's movements who walked the area and actually what part of the area with me and he was bilingual and spoke english, italian and german and many of the documents were translated thanks to him, so i had some incredible help from the

italians on this project, and i am very happy with that. they were incredibly helpful. folks that the institution of resistance in blue no is dedicated to preserving the resistance fighters and they are incredibly, incredibly detailed looking at it from all sides and i spent weeks over their mining their archives as well as the national archives and watching the drop zones in northern italy to capture the story which was made up about 10,000 documents but it's also told in a very cinematic matter. >> what happened to the chapel after the second world war? did he get out of the army and o.s. s.?

>> yes. how ward chapel was initially slated to form a japanese operational group to assault the island of japan. the matter of course went off and he then joined effectively the bureau firearms forerunner to the atf and became involved in taking up the mafia as far as narcotics related incidents though and his exploits are legendary. he was an absolutely fearless. i interviewed him. he of chile took -- in some cases he would go audaciously further than his duties required which was typical of trouble during the war as well as after and in fact he went inside the homes of several mobsters, put a machine gun to their head and

got basically took care of the case and was later sued by mickey cohen a famous mobster in l.a. for a salt. in after the war how word chapel is one of the most remarkable people i ever met and also sort of somebody that even was somewhat afraid of and it took years to interview him and when he did say he wanted to be interviewed it was a remarkable story in itself. he's a i went to california on announced and said i am here and he said okay and i said well i would like to interview you. he's like all right, fine. meet me at spyglass drive at the beach. [laughter] and i said okay, i will be there

at noon. i drove to the beach and i was five minutes early, called him up and was like okay, good. so i was at the gas station as he requested and i will never forget. this large town car with tinted windows pulls up and this man who's 90 years of looks at me and i just said hello, howard. he's like follow me. went back to his house and that's where the interview began. we went back in time and i will never forget he was very sort of ornery and very much in control and i will never forget he had a debtor he used to open the mail he would fill with in front of me and i will never forget that's how the interview began and we went back in time and it was literally one of his last interviews and howard chapel sadly died on his deathbed as i was practically as i got this

story. >> that, both of your books to tell ... operations in germany and in your new book they dare return. i'm curious to know if you could speak about the mission they were assigned to undertake as well. >> bader the return is the current book i have out right now. and it's about the operative store part of chapels group, part of the german operation will group and they were all jewish refugees the peacekeeping nazi germany and their return. they went back and it's one of the great stories of world war ii. where these men, the german operational group gets dropped off in north africa and in the military democracy everybody loses track of it and nobody

knows where they are supposed to be or who they are and they are about to be put into this depo and become paratroopers in the airborne division and within this group is a group of best friends who are called the jewish life and they are led by a man named fred neyer who is a life to this day and he's 89-years-old and is one of the most remarkable individuals that i've ever met. he takes this group of five and says look, we are here to do a mission, to go back and nothing is going on with chapel's mission and they literally mutely from the group and strike out in a jeep and find another oss headquarters and they go to the headquarters and literally begged for a mission. and i will never forget howard

lieutenant colonel in charge of the austria desk says to the jewish five what are you here for all that type of stuff and friend of mayor says to him this is more our war than it is your war and that becomes sort of the whole premise for their mission and they go back behind the lines and literally change the course of the war like in the entire group to surrender as well as gather critical intelligence and blow up 26 trains. >> patrick a wonder if you could elaborate on the basement of the house. [laughter] >> well, i'm so glad you're here, bob. it is an honor and you are the son of the spymaster the was involved in all these missions

that made all of this possible literally thousands of these documents came from that base not archive the we are talking about in bethesda and you're father was a great friend of mine. elbert, his nickname was the brain and after the war of the brain a squirrel away literally tens of thousands of declassified documents and had so many of the contacts that i needed and convinced chapel to interview me and everything else and it was through your father's big difference that this book was possible and i will never forget it became tuesday's with the brain instead of tuesday's with maureen. i would go down and i would spend hours in these archives sifting through these old documents, and your dad was quite the perfectionist and was all about making sure everything

was right and we would go off to an italian restaurant, a drink wine that afternoon and were true these documents and it was through this sort of document boot camp that so much was this possible. >> thank you. the partisan at the end of the village, did he confirm things you already knew? did he tell you he knew things? was that like? >> a combination of things. he told me new store even more dramatic than the documents revealed. for instance, the final portion of the mission is quite extraordinary. the men had to somehow get 30 miles, go through 30 miles of german wines that have

checkpoints and everything else and somehow get toward the brenner pass. so this gentleman was chosen to drive the truck to get these guys there and in the truck was the person to lead a secret compartments inside of crates and chapel and six-foot to figure as well as the other men in the weapons and the media were secret in the back of the truck and mario drove this truck through every checkpoint and he told me how long the first checkpoint they make it through. nobody actually pulls up the target looks through the box this and in the second or third checkpoint, the germans become more suspicious and they say listen, pullover, we are going to search the chalk and they start to feverishly pull off the tarp and they start to try to pry the box is which contain

chapel and the other team members which would have blown this entire mission of the germans had actually uncovered the cree and found chapel. but as all of this is taking place there is this weird rainstorm that comes about and they literally, the germans just decide they can't break free the box so they are going to let them buy and he says to me they rapped on the top of the metal on the truck and they waved me through and that's how the history of the tacoma mission was accomplished. >> thank you for a wonderful presentation triet [applause] >> patrick o'donnell is a military historian and the author of we were one shoulder to shoulder with of the marines' tragic fallujah and bea of raleigh the recipient of the william colby award for

outstanding military history. he is the founder ofop ze an orb site. for more information, visit thedropzone.org. on your screen now is carol beck with the seat school in maryland and with her or four students from the seat school. explain what the seed school is and why you were at the national press club author plight. >> the seed school of maryland is a college prep school. it's in baltimore city but it serves students throughout maryland. the school was only 2-years-old and a unique thing about the school is it is a boarding school so our students are living with us in college like dormitories during the week and go home on weekends and the idea is to have that 24 hours and to use it as well as we can solve our students will be prepared for college. that is our goal, so the students here tonight are

seventh graders and they are all ready and have been talking about college for over a year. when they came here as sixth graders last year. >> explain the philosophy behind seed. sprick there are students could truly benefit and have a changing experiences if they're given 24 hours a day to focus on their studies and all the all kind of development that will help them be successful not only in college but beyond and that is the singular goal is to make sure all of the students are prepared. >> how are you funded? >> we are largely funded publicly. it is a partnerships of the state of maryland has a unique commitment to the long-term operating of the funds for the school. the private sector of individual donors have made it possible for the campus to be built and they are helping with startup costs as we get to scale. >> why are you at the national press club author might? >> we are thrilled to be at the

national author might. at the invitation of the club which is taken an interest in both feet seed school of maryland and the sister school of d.c.. so the idea is the school is brand new and we have hardly any books in the library so patrons at the book fair are making their own purchases for themselves and also by teeing dictionaries and novels for the library and the students are here to thank them and also share some of the patrons a very small book of their own riding, poems and essays they've prepared. >> let's meet the students. tell your name, what greater in a favorite subject. >> my name is stephanie and died in the seventh grade and i really don't have a favorite subject because i'm good at all but i like math and i'm doing algebra i right now and ms. murphy is a quote teacher. >> why did you decide to go or why are you going to five seed school?

>> when i first got the author for the seed school, it was like woo, with my parents and get to be responsible for my own actions, and the seed school makes it opened the issue can be whoever you want to be, you can express yourself but the same time you know your goal is to go to college so that is why i am at the seed school. >> what are you reading right now? >> right now we finished the joy luck club and right now we're sticking to read the diary of anne frank and it's about a german girl who was segregated and had to go to these recreation camps and stuff and we just really want to hear her opinion of what she was going through. >> stephanie, thank you. we've got more students. this looks like devin, did i get the right? devin, i'm holding here in my hand a booklet. what is in here? >> in this booklet we have poems written by students at seed school and also artwork from the

art class is we have in the school. >> and are you published in here? >> yes, one of my artworks is the bishop i created. >> in the book i have texture. >> go ahead and show it to us. >> in the book we have different things in here. we also have poetry creating by madison. here are some of the artworks. this is lucas's peace. here is my chess piece. i put wings and other textures on my piece which is the bishop. they also did the rookie, the king and the queen. >> so you are a chess player quixotism also in the chess club. we of different clubs the schools such as basketball, football, soccer and other things. >> now, then, you are here at the press club author night. what kind of books do you want for your library? >> we have a dictionary which i

would really like to help with the school day because it also gives tips about some of the birds you can be using in school. also we have a thesaurus which is interesting from the cover. this is the dictionary for the high school. >> what's told us so everybody at home can see it. is this a dictionary will use in school? >> we do not have this dictionary which is why people are buying books for the library. we have seen many people so we are hoping to see these in the library at the school. >> thank you. we've got two more students is. is it mya? hi, mya, hauer do? what are you reading right now? >> i am reading a book called the mystery of the blue down ghost and i have been reading a book with various stories called chicken soup for the teenage

seóul and it's about how teenagers deal with problems at school and with their life and stuff and how to overcome those problems and it's really nice because, like, we are all in middle school becoming teachers and stuff, so, like, that's why i picked that book to read. >> would you enjoy most about the seed school and how did you get in it? >> my friend told me about the seed school so i really wanted to apply because i've always been wanting to go to a boarding school and i thought it would be a fun experience and my favorite part about the seed school is learning on a higher level and learning new things i didn't know before the culture one. i never felt that i would learn so many things that i'm learning now. i felt all of those things would be so hard that would wait until tenth grade to learn but i'm in seventh grade already learning those things and it's very

exciting. >> so you are library and school, if people are watching this and want to donate something to the seed school would be the best kind of books or resources to donate? >> i think the best kind of books would be something that would catch our i, like something very interesting like it doesn't have to be smart books, it can be real world of writing like books like biographee and dictionaries, too because you can always learn new words. it's very cool to learn new words never before. >> such as this dictionary? so people can buy this dictionary do need this to a school, is that what you're saying? >> yes. >> thank you. we have one more student and this is madison. madison lee? hi, madison. what are you reading right now? >> the diary of anne frank. >> what you think it? >> i'm thinking it's very good and it's how her life was and how difficult it was to be in

that situation. >> she was about an seventh grade, too, wasn't she? that kind of weird to think about her in her life and your life, right? >> yes, it is. >> are you a poet? >> yes ibm. i actually have a couple of poems in the book right there. >> in this book here? and would you like about poetry? >> i like poetry because it can express my feelings. it's what my life is going through and held the seed school of maryland as and it also helps me learn something different like i can put different words into my poetry. >> madison, are you ends of the ball so? >> yes, sir. >> where are you from? >> baltimore maryland. >> thank you for spending a few minutes with us. carol beck, if people are interested in donating to the seed school what is the best way to contact you? >> we will provide our address

and phone number -- >> you have a website? >> we do, it is seedschoolmd.org petraeus >> carol beck of seed school of maryland. thank you. >> thank you.

presidential biographer richard reeves presents a history of the berlin airlift which occurred from may, 1948 to june, 1949. he focuses on the exploits of the american air man called back into service by president truman three years after their duty in world war ii. the national constitution center in philadelphia posts this hour-long event. >> and seven francs a director of special programs of the national constitution center. we are pleased to welcome to the center historian richard reeves whose latest book daring young men recounts the story of the

berlin airlift and brave pilots who risk their lives to supply humanitarian aid during world war ii. as many of you know the success of the berlin airlift is viewed as the first cold war victory for america against the soviet union. as the editors of publisher of weeklies in the review of daring young man, quote, reeves gives a mesmerizing portrait of america at its best we've been challenged by russia's tierney utilizing previously unpublished documents and numerous interviews reeves provides a voice for these extraordinary servicemen who accomplish extraordinary things. it was the same spirit which brought the constitution center to life and its critics of the story of week the people to demonstrate how ordinary americans have helped perfect an extraordinary document. this desire evident through the nation's history to improve upon the president and make things right exists inside of borders as well as al-sayyid as the recent earthquake and he should